Beautiful Mess
by xox-'.'-K-A-G-O-M-E-'.'-xox
Summary: Sasuke and Naruto's latest mission brings back an orphaned girl. A powerful sharingan technique is used to make her forget her witness to the murder of her village but the process is rather painful. Sasuke helps out.


_How I love to drabble. And torture Sasuke (oh my beautiful mess!). _

_So anyway, this one is a (probs early. Curse my futuristic country) __**HAPPY BIRTHDAY!**__ (I LOVE YOU LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND I REALLY HOPE YOU LIKE THIS AND PLEASE HURRY UP AND EMAIL ME BECAUSE I MISS YOU! WHEN ARE YOU EVEN GONNA READ THIS?) to the amazing __**Marcab. **__She's a bloody fantastic writer so you guys should take a leisurely stroll over to her page and have a squiz at her masterpieces._

_Kthnxbai!_

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><p><strong>Beautiful Mess<strong>

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Sasuke's dark eyes watched Naruto's blue ones focus solely on where the nurse's shoes were braced against the clinically blue hospital floor, struggling for grip as they tried to hold their patient in place.

"_KILL ME! WHO AM I!" _

Sasuke blinked and then looked up, his gaze meeting the scene before him; three nurses attempting to strap the girl he and Naruto had picked up on their mission to the hospital bed by her wrists. Her thin, white body, all exposed from where the hospital gown had come loose and fallen forward, heaved making black-blue bruises roll disturbingly as she threw herself forward, screaming, eyes clenched shut and then wide open.

"_KILL ME!"_

Being a witness was such a horrific thing. Sasuke knew. The way blood spattering on your skin, the quiet _shing_ of blades, the frightening tip-toe pools of red creeping towards you, played over and over in your mind until you couldn't bear it was cruel.

And then there was that jutsu. That special technique the sharingan had that they used for victims such as the girl- misplaced orphans with no family, no village left- that could just make you… forget. Eventually it stabilized but before then, there was this. This screaming and terror of not knowing who you are. Something like feeling you're missing vital parts. A feeling that was so overwhelming that death seemed like a better alternative. Activating his own sharingan, still not quite the sharingan that had put the girl in this state, Sasuke watched her chakra tear through her body.

Naruto side stepped and pressed closer to Sasuke as the girl's screaming got louder still, one wrist pinned to the bed behind her, a nurse moving to secure it, and the other reaching out in front of her, grappling for any hold on something real and secure. Her eyes were wild.

Naruto's fingers on the back of his hand trembled as if the screeching of the girl was rattling his bones.

"Sasu…" he murmured. Sasuke hummed back at the blonde. The raven supposed the other man was scared or something like that, or feeling sorry for the girl, or just finding the whole thing too hard to watch, but really, Sasuke just wished someone would shut her up. She was annoying. Her screams were thickening the air and the dark haired man was finding it a bit hard to breathe.

Sasuke closed his eyes and took a deep breath in.

Behind his eye lids an image faded in and in his ears the girl's cries got deeper and closer, a familiar voice washing over him before he had time to stop it.

.

.

In the hallway Sasuke stood with bath soft bare feet, small hands curled around the door frame. His body shook and his eyes were wide, his vision wobbling with tears as the sounds from inside his brother's room rushed through the house. Blood curdling screams that had Sasuke too scared to move, his blood running cold, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

"KILL ME! KILL ME! KAASAN! KILL ME!"Itachi's fingers were wet with blood, his face and neck clawed at, long red marks that looked grey in the weak light of the lamp that had been knocked to the floor. Bite marks on his arms.

Uchiha Mikoto knelt over her son, fighting his hands from his face but the boy was elite, strong, quick, an Uchiha. He tore them free and went for his own throat.

"ITACHI STOP IT! IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!" Mikoto grabbed his arms but he lashed out and hit her across the face, knocking her sideways. The eldest Uchiha's skin was frighteningly white even in the dimness of the room, tears streaking down his twisted face.

"I KILLED THEM! KILL ME! MAMA! MAMA!" His cries were piercing and jarring and Sasuke couldn't take it; hearing his brother, his precious Niisan, so brave and perfect, beg to be killed and call for his mother the way they had as children. He felt sick, the ground like water moving beneath his feet and he knew he shouldn't watch but he couldn't look away. He wished his father would come down the hallway and send him back to bed with one stern glance. But no one came and Sasuke continued to stand and watch his brother try to rip himself apart.

"ITACHI! PLEASE STOP IT! " Mikoto lunged forward and gathered her son in her arms, holding him so tightly against her chest that he couldn't move. Itachi screamed and thrashed but Mikoto held tight as she rocked back and forth on her knees. Sasuke could see her clenching her teeth. The bed creaked beneath the sound of Itachi's screams turning to anguished sobs. His hands came to grip desperately at his mother, his body falling forward into her embrace, shoulders shaking as he cried. He looked thin and frail.

Back and forth they rocked with Itachi sobbing "Kill me Kaasan, kill me. Kill me…" And Mikoto, with her face in Itachi's hair murmuring through tears, "Tomorrow honey, tomorrow. Right now just sleep."

Sasuke stood in that doorway and watched his mother rock his brother for the longest time until he fell into exhausted sleep.

Mikoto left the room with blood on the hands that she used to put Sasuke back to bed. Her cheeks were wet and lips swollen against his forehead when she kissed him goodnight with the words, "He's had a hard day. Your Niisan just started in the ANBU you know…"

.

.

"Sasuke."

A breath Sasuke hadn't realized he'd been holding passed nosily through his lips.

Naruto's hand was in his and the arm that brushed up against his shook slightly. The voice Naruto had called his name with sounded anxious.

The girl roared, tearing her wrists away from the half-buckled bindings and diving forward towards the end of the bed. One nurse caught her by the shoulder but she threw out her arm and knocked her aside. Sasuke admired how the mess of tears on her pale skin caught the light through the window, sort of glimmering.

"_KILL ME!" _

The next nurse hit the ground with a yelp. The girl went for her own throat and Sasuke blinked once slowly.

"Sasuke," said Naruto a little more urgently and wriggled his fingers, making Sasuke suddenly realize that it wasn't Naruto who had taken his hand, but he who had grabbed for Naruto and was now holding onto him so tightly that the other man couldn't get free to make a move to help. Sasuke quickly loosened his grip and Naruto's fingers slid from between his but before the blonde could take a step forward, Sasuke was pushing him back with a firm hand on his chest and crossing the room in two long strides.

The girl screamed and snarled, backing up against the head board as he approached calmly, her heels slipping on the sheets. She looked scared of him, her eyes wide. One nurse asked him to step back as she clutched one of the patient's struggling arms but he kept coming, setting on knee on the side of the bed. The girl's eyes narrowed and lips pulled back to reveal her teeth as she growled.

Just like an animal, thought the ninja, not blinking as they locked eyes, leaning forward, keeping her eyes on him as he reached around her field of vision for her arm.

Sasuke pulled her restrained limb from the nurse with ease and without hesitation, with her mouth dragging air in and pushing it out as a roar, the girl launched forward in attack.

A nurse yelled and Sasuke heard Naruto's kunai clink in their pouch as he shifted his weight slightly. Rolling his shoulders forward and moving the tiniest bit left and then the tiniest bit right, the girl's hands with bloodstained fingertips passed right by him and she fell into his chest as he moved in just as she did. And then his arms were around her body that immediately began to writhe at the contact. She thrashed and screamed, horrified by his touch but Sasuke just moved his other knee up onto the bed and held onto her tightly, one arm around her arms and waist, the other in her hair at the base of her neck, holding her in place. She grated her teeth against his chest, pinching Sasuke's skin as she tried to sink her teeth into his flesh and her hands found their way inside his shirt, tearing at the skin at his sides with long, broken nails, drawing blood. But Sasuke held tight so she couldn't break away, his face calm. No wincing. He held her tight and began to rock back and forth, smoothing the hair behind her ear with his thumb. Back and forth. Her sweaty, bloody palms slipped over his skin as she tried to pry herself from him, her legs twisting in strange ways as she tried to find something to push away from, her arms useless, pinned to Sasuke at the elbow.

"_NO! NO! NO! NO! LET ME GO! KILL ME! WHY! WHYY!" _

No one but Sasuke and the girl moved. Her still struggling, him still rocking. His chest was tight as the dimly lit room bit at the edges of his mind. He ignored it. She screamed, her voice rattling Sasuke's ears, roaring against his eardrums. He held her by the hair as she tried to turn her head to bite his shoulder or neck.

"Sasuke…" Naruto was at his side, one hand reaching for his shoulder. Sasuke glanced sideways to lock eyes with the blonde briefly and Naruto withdrew his hand. The girl's feral roars were starting to melt into sobs, her clawing getting less desperate, weaker. Sasuke licked his bottom lip and shifted position, lifting himself higher up on his knees and letting up on the pressure his hand was putting on the girl's head and she threw it back and screamed. The same kind of blood curdling scream that Sasuke had heard so long ago.

He could see it on the nurses' faces, in the way Naruto averted his eyes to the floor; how that scream that was so horrifically raw and full of anger, sorrow and vulnerability, unnerved them. But not Sasuke.

Her voice suddenly cracked and the girl went limp in his arms, still crying but no more screaming, no more fighting. Sasuke's arm was a support along her spine, her head lolling back into his hand, tears rolling down past her cheekbones to Sasuke's fingers in her hair.

"Shhh…" he murmured to her as she cried; arms hanging lifelessly, body just as suddenly as it had become wild, falling fragile in his arms, shuddering with every intake of air. She groaned and coughed and whined and cried. Sasuke bent over her and fitted her body, rolling stomach and heaving chest, against his. Her hands, shaking so violently she barely had control over them came to clutch at Sasuke's shirt, her face pressing into his neck. He moved his legs from beneath him so that they were cross legged and fell back to sit, the girl a silently sobbing heap in his lap.

Sasuke listened to emotion rumble in his ears, a bitter scent in his nose and lifted his face to the ceiling, feeling tears that he hasn't noticed until now making his eyelashes heavy and wet and then rolling down the side of his face as he clenched his eyes shut once.

"Shhhh… Shhhh, its ok…." Naruto's hand was at his neck, making firm little circles with his fingertips. His voice was soft and thick with emotion. Sasuke looked up at him and the blonde smiled sadly, his painfully blue eyes glistening. He thumbed a tear from Sasuke's cheek. Comforting him as he comforted her. Sasuke just watched him.

And then, all at once it was quiet. The girl's body had stopped convulsing; unconscious and there was nothing but the nurses' shaky breathing. Naruto stroked Sasuke's hair and touched the tight muscles in his shoulders and didn't stop till the nurses took the girl, her face finally peaceful in sleep, from Sasuke's arms and laid her down. Strapping her wrists down by her sides. Sasuke stood up and Naruto's hand slid to the middle of his back to unnecessarily steady him and Sasuke frowned and glared but Naruto simply tilted his chin up to look at Sasuke and smiled.

Outside the room and ten paces down the hallway in their click-clack ninja sandals, Naruto laughed.

"What are you giggling about Dobe," asked Sasuke. They stopped and Naruto adjusted his forehead protector and then stood back with his hands on his hips. His face had returned to a healthy, golden glow. His blue eyes were soft again.

"Just that ya know, you always seem all about yourself. Sasuke the lone wolf. Never do anything for anyone else. I've always expected you to be a selfish bastard; I mean you barely even do anything for me… But really..." Naruto knocked the back of his knuckles against Sasuke's chest. Sasuke blinked. There was a long moment of silence where Naruto just looked at him.

"But really?" He prompted the blonde.

"Really," said Naruto, closing his eyes into a foxy smile and turning his hand around to lay his palm flat on Sasuke's chest. "You're kind and caring and understanding." Sasuke snorted through his nose and tried to turn to start walking again but Naruto grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him back to face him.

"Naruto this sort of thing is-" But Naruto shook his head.

"You don't know it Teme but…" The toothy grin was gone and what remained was nothing but Naruto's blue eyes.

"…You've got a good heart."


End file.
